Framingham now meets the new definition of a high-risk “red zone” community, as both cases and test positivity jumped substantially this week.
Framingham’s known new cases averaged 34.2 per 100,000 people over the last 14 days. The old red-zone level was 8.0, regardless of test positivity. The new level for cities of at least 50K people is 10, but with positivity of at least 4%.
The city’s Covid-19 test positivity jumped from 3.2% to 4.4% in the same 14-day period, according to the weekly report released today by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
While number of tests administered did rise in the last two weeks, they only went up 10%. Meanwhile, the total number of known new cases rose 48%.
Statewide hospitalizations have soared 142% in the last 30 days.
Source: Massachusetts Department of Health
Statewide maps
This is statewide map under the new color scale:
And this what the map would have looked like if the Baker administration hadn’t changed the criteria for red and yellow zones.
MWRA wastewater tests
Tests for Covid-19 virus traces in MWRA wastewater, considered a possible leading indicator for future infections, have also been rising. Below is a graph of available sample results.
Biobot, the external private lab running the testing, changed its data processing protocol on Nov. 17. The graph below reflects the new protocols going back to March (water samples were retested. The new data also includes confidence intervals, but my graph does not reflect those. Please go to the MWRA site to see those visualizations.)
Framingham is in the South region, along with about 20 other communities including Ashland, Natick, Wellesley, and portions of Newton, Brookline, and Boston.
You can click on the legend below to turn one of the line series off and on. You can also click and drag on an area of the graph to zoom in.
See latest Covid-19 coverage at http://www.district2framingham.com/tags/covid19/.
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